A History of Bombing [Hardcover]

Sven Lindqvist (Author), Linda Haverty Rugg (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2001 | ISBN-10: 1565846257 | ISBN-13: 978-1565846258 | Edition: 1ST

An daring literary and historical look at the ideologies of war and violence, by the author of "Exterminate All the Brutes." On November 1, 1911, Lieutenant Cavotti leaned out of the cockpit of his delicate aircraft and, holding a Haasen hand grenade, began one of the most devastating military tactics of the twentieth century: aerial bombing. This is but one of the many points of entry Lindqvist presents in this cleverly constructed, innovative history. Structuring his book in a way that reenacts the disruptions of history caused by the advent of the bomb, Lindqvist presents a series of "entries" that mirror the disturbing story he unravels. Picking up where his controversial "Exterminate All the Brutes" left off, Lindqvist focuses this time on the fascinating histories behind the development of air power, bombs, and the laws of war and international justice, demonstrating how the practices of the two world wars were born of colonial warfare.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Describing genocide as part of the "master story" of Western civilizations, Swedish author and political activist Lindqvist (The Skull Measurer's Mistake) argues that before the development of powered flight, bombs delivered from the air were regarded as an efficient way to kill large groups of people at a safe distance. What the bombs and rockets have from the beginning been intended to do, he continues, is slaughter "others" and "outsiders"--"peoples of color" who will not submit to imperialism, or who are just somehow in the way. Lindqvist offers here a work whose format is more striking than its contents. The book, translated by Berkeley Scandinavian studies professor Linda Haverty Rugg, is composed of excerpts and vignettes, drawn from remarkably diverse sources on aerial bombardment, and numbered 1 to 399, proceeding chronologically from the A.D. 762 to 1999, but mostly concerning the 20th century. (Number 155 begins, "During the 1920s, novels about the future often dealt with a time of barbarism.") Most intriguingly, according to Lindqvist, the widespread use of aerial bombardment by Western states against each other in the two world wars was an anomaly made possible not by dehumanizing, but by "dewesternizing" the targets. The end of the Cold War stripped away the mask; Kosovo was only the first stage of an aerial reign of terror. Lindqvist's case, too simplistic and too overstated to be convincing, is nevertheless powerful. His juxtaposition of fact-based history with passages taken from survivalist fiction, racist fantasies like The Turner Diaries and dystopian future-war predictions demonstrates the extent to which aerial bombing is regarded as an ultimate weapon for destroying the opposition. Anyone who thought twice about what happened in the Gulf War or Kosovo will find this intentionally fragmentary analysis compelling; others will be less sympathetic.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

This is a small, but brilliant book. -- Dagens Nyheter

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: New Press; 1ST edition (March 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565846257
• ISBN-13: 978-1565846258
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #991,895 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How does it feel to get bombed?, October 2, 2001

By 

mason inman (Berkeley, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A History of Bombing (Hardcover)

A History of Bombing by Sven Lindqvist

This book explores the history of bombing with a focus on those who were bombed, and the attitudes of those who did the bombing. It is not a technical history, but rather a moral history, along the lines of Jonathan Glover's book Humanity, although their emphases and styles are very different.

He draws from many sources to put together a view which is very unique, combining military history, literary history, and political history (especially of European colonies) with analyses of the development of international law regulating warfare and of politicians and officer's views of war. He also adds in autobiographical elements of his fear of attacks as a child during WWII. He follows the development of technologies of bombing, and the techniques of bombing that came along with them (localized to strategic to area bombing, with nuclear bombing of civilians being the culmination of this). He looks at many futuristic novels to see what people's attitudes were toward war and the massive annilhilation possible through bombing, and finds much racism, and also many predicitions of how destructive bombing would become. He looks at many military theoreticians and shapers of international law, both before and since the advent of planes and bombing, to see what has formed our views of what is acceptable in warfare, and how these laws have been bent and broken.

One of Lindqvist's main points is the element of racism in bombing, and how bombing was initially acceptable only when conducted against those who were not civlized, or less than human. Europeans became used to the idea of bombing in the colonies, and this paved the way for the massive bombing which first took place in "civilized lands" in WWII.

He does not shy away from criticizing those groups who are supposed to be the vanguard of civilization, such as the British and Americans. He discusses colonial interventions, and how bombing was integrated into the general program to civilize the "savages" of Africa and Asia. He points out how little value was given to the life of one of the colonized as opposed to one of the colonizers. Only with this inequality could bombing could be used as a police action (i.e., to put down rebellions) which was cheaper, in terms of money and lives--but only in terms of lives of the colonizers. This inequality also comes up when looking at international law. The laws concerning warfare, such as the Geneva conventions, were shaped during the period when Europeans held colonies. Even though these laws were put in universal terms, in practice they were only thought to apply to fighting between "civilized" countries, and not to what goes on in the colonies. Again, this inequality comes up with regard to national sovereignty, and the wars in Korea and Vietnam.

A large part of the book focuses on WWII, and he criticizes many of the choices of the Allied powers, such as area bombing and firebombing in Germany, firebombing and nuclear bombing in Japan. Some people may therefore find this book one-sided, but remember that this is the side that historically has not been heard. Also, he places WWI and WWII against the history of imperialism, of the Europeans and the Japanese, which makes it clear that he is not a supporter of any specific country, but concerned with the effects of warfare on people at large, whoever and wherever they may be, and even if they are citizens of an enemy country.

P.S. The structure of the book is really interesting. It is split into many short sections that have more or less a single point, and are centered around an event or person. These are placed in chronological order, but the book only makes sense if you read it following one of 23 strands he identifies, each focusing on different aspects of the history (i.e., "Bombing the Savages", "Hamburg, Auschwitz, Dresden", "Massive Retaliation", etc.). In this way, as you move through history, forward and backward, you flip through the book, which helps emphasize the historical placement of the events and ideas, and allows him to touch on a lot of different topics without the book becoming a mess.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Distinctive, Passionate and thought provoking, August 15, 2008

By 

John Mitchell (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: History of Bombing (Hardcover)

This is a book I read a long time ago and it stuck with me afterwards - it's got an unusual nonlinear structure (the short segments are arranged roughly chronologically, but you read them non-sequentially as the author mixes history, personal anecdote, etc). This structure could be seen as a gimmick, but I felt it worked well to create a work whose whole felt greater than the sum of its parts. Other reviewers have faulted the book as a "History of Bombing" - but the intention was not to write a history as such. As a rumination on the human predilection for war, past, present, and (sadly) future it's a worthwhile journey.

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You are dead!, March 13, 2001

By 

Mattias Borjesson - See all my reviews

This review is from: A History of Bombing (Hardcover)

Lindqvists work a history of bombing is a major achivment of the human mind. The greatest about Lindqvists books is his use of such an wide perspective and view on history from so many different perspectives. Many regular historians are so caught up in their own subject and narrow perspective, that they don't see beyond the narrow limits of the traditional role of the academic historian. Lindqvist use fiction littature to give us a view of how ideas of extermination and mass destruction was widley spread and a part of the basis of western thought in the period 1850-1950. This is a powerfull insight, becuse many of us today deny this and say it was just a minority who shared those beliefs, when in fact it was the opposite, the majority accepted those ideas only a tiny minority spoke out against them. By using fiction littature Lindqvist shows that the ideas of genocide was not anti-western, it was an integrated part in the western civilization. With his different perspective and use of fiction, it is always refrhing to read his books. In a history of bombing you follow the terrible history of bombing from its beginnings in colonial warfare, by those who set out to civilize inferior peoples. But in Europe it was still taboo to use the same methodes of warfare against civilized europeans. But then those ideas who came from the subjection of non european peoples around the world, arrived to Europe. In the ultimate nightmare of modern warfare, in the second world war, bombing of civilians became a legitimate form of warfare. Hitlers new empire was ruled on the basis of a colonial empire, racial imperialism. Germany would use eastern Euroe as a vast colonial empire, were racially inferior people would work for the new masters.

Hitler was crushed in with him the idea of racial imperialism. But as Linqvist shows in the enviorment of the escalating cold war, and the colonies struggle to gain independence barbarious acts of bombing continued. Mass bombing continued in the colonies, but was stopped when the public in the western world realized its horrors. As Lindqvist writes, bombing of civilins could not stand the view of the public eye. In Korea and Vietnam, mass bombing of civilians became a way for the US to contain communism. But as protests agiainst the bombing in Vietnam intensified the United States lost its public support abroard and at home.Now with recent events in the Gulf war and after, Lindqvists survey of bombing history is needed. Today, as in the the old days there are those who once again claim that bombing could be an efficient way to wage low cost wars wihout casulties. A view of the history of the horrors of mass bombing should be a refreshment to the memory, and will hopefully put the supporters of the bombs in minority status, should they gain momentum once again then you are dead, like the millions before you.